Walk Me Home (36 page)

“It wasn’t any more windy than usual last night.”

“Wow. So that’s, like, an everyday thing? It felt like a hurricane to me.”

“Right here in town?”

“Well. No. I was walking up from Arcata last night. And the wind was so strong I could hardly walk in it.”

“Hmm. We didn’t really get it so much up here. I mean, that I know of. Maybe I slept right through it.”

Then he moves off with her order. A bowl of clam chowder and a glass of iced tea. She promised herself she wouldn’t spend more than the quarters in her pocket would cover.

While he’s gone, she looks out at the ocean. The bay. She can see it from here. The café isn’t exactly poised on the edge of the cliff, but if she looks across the street at the right angle, she can see a sliver of water between the cliff and the horizon. It feels good to be indoors. To see the ocean without the wind and the fog and the cold punishing her while she watches.

What do people do when they’re homeless? she wonders. Do they ever get used to that? Could she ever get used to having no way to get indoors, out of the elements?

Her stomach ices over in fear, bordering on panic, and at first she doesn’t know why. Then it breaks through. She’s about to find out if she’s homeless or not. Not even if she and Jen are homeless. Jen seems to have found a home. Carly seems to be the one out in the world alone.

The waiter comes back with her soup.

“I asked the cook,” he says. “Because he drives up from Eureka every morning early. He said there was sort of a microburst. This little wind event, and then a couple miles later, it was gone. Weather is like that sometimes. You can have these little microclimates. Ten miles away it’s all still. Oh. And by the way. He doesn’t know Teddy, either. But since he lives in Eureka…you know…”

“Oh,” she says. “Well…thanks for asking him, anyway. I never heard of a microburst. Or a microclimate. But anyway, I’m glad that’s not what it’s like here usually. Because I’m hoping I’ll be living here soon.”

“I hope that works out for you,” he says and fills her glass with iced tea.

Her stomach clamps tight and then freezes up again.

She thinks, Yeah. I hope that works out for me, too.

She sits for hours, staring at the ocean and nursing iced tea after iced tea. Because she has no place else to go. The waiter keeps coming by and filling up her glass, and when she apologizes for taking up the table, he assures her that it’s fine because they’re not busy at all.

It means a great deal to Carly to have someplace she feels welcome. The fact that it’s just a cheap, touristy seafood café is not the best part of that feeling.

Carly doesn’t know exactly what time it is when she gets back to the Whale Tail, but she figures it’s too early. If she had to guess, she’d say it was seven or seven thirty. What if this Linda—she can’t bring herself to think “Teddy” somehow—doesn’t come to the lounge until nine? Or Ten? Or later? Or…at all.

She doesn’t think she can go in, because she doesn’t want to waste money ordering anything. She’ll have to find a place outside to sit where she can see the front door.

But first, she sticks her head inside.

Then she takes two steps in.

The bar area is on the left, but the angle of the line of patrons sitting at the bar blocks her view of most of the faces. So she walks right into the bar area for a better look.

She’s busted immediately.

A waiter taps her on the shoulder and says, “Excuse me, miss. You have to be twenty-one to be in the bar.”

But she doesn’t answer him. Because there, in the mirror behind the bartender, is the perfect reflection of Teddy’s face. She squeezes her eyes closed, the way she did when she first saw Trinidad Bay. When she opens them, Teddy’s reflection is still there.

She opens her mouth to call out to him. She wants to say, Oh, my God, do you have any idea how far I’ve come to find you? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve watched this moment play out in my head?

The waiter taps her shoulder again, but she ignores it.

She calls out to Teddy. But all that comes out is just that one word. “Teddy!”

It’s much too loud. Every diner, every bar patron, stops talking and turns to look at her.

“Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the waiter says.

“I just have to see Teddy.”

And then, Teddy is there. Towering over her.

“Carly?” he asks. As if it might or might not be her. As if she might be some sort of cunning Carly imposter, sent to trick him.

She throws her arms around his chest and holds him so tightly he makes a wheezing noise.

“Carly, what’re you doing here?”

But she can’t make words happen. She can’t even open her mouth.

“Ted, what the hell is this?” a woman’s voice says.

Carly doesn’t have to look up to know she’s about to meet Linda Litnipski.

The waiter is getting less patient. Carly can hear it in his voice.

“Take this outside, Ted,” he says, “whatever it is.”

Teddy peels Carly off and leads her outside. Back out into the misty cold air. How can anyplace be cold in late May? It’s a thought out of context, but it’s what she thinks.

Linda Litnipski follows. She’s blonde, maybe as tall as Teddy, or taller. Built solid. With a long, horsey, not particularly attractive face.

“You better start explaining, Ted,” she says.

“It’s nothing,” Teddy says.

The two words hit Carly like a torpedo.

It makes her think of Delores Watakobie, telling those little Wakapi girls the same thing about Carly. “It’s nothing.” Or…maybe Delores said, “It don’t matter.” But the feeling is the same. She can even see a flash of the old woman’s face. Too clearly. Like Alvin on the freeway. Like Jen playing on the monkey bars at the Trinidad Elementary School.

“What kind of nothing, exactly?” Linda demands.

“Just the daughter of a woman I used to know. It’s not what you’re thinking, Linda. I swear.”

“Well, what’s she doing here, then?”

“Here’s a thought,” Teddy says. “Let’s ask
her
. Carly, what are you doing here? Where’s your mom?”

“She’s gone, Teddy.”

“She took off and left you guys?”

“She died.”

A long silence. One even Linda Litnipski doesn’t dare fill.

“She died?”

“She went out for a drive with that idiot. Wade. And now she’s dead.”

Another long silence. Carly can feel the fog creeping into her joints and bone marrow.

“God, I’m sorry, Carly.”

“But…” Linda says.

“But…” Teddy says. “…what are you doing here?”

“I came to find you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“
Why you?
Teddy. I had to find
somebody
. Who else could I find? Who else do I even
have
to find?”

Carly hears waves land on the rocks in the silence that follows. Something is forming in her gut, against her will. A clear sensation that this is not how the moment was supposed to play out.

Linda Litnipski is the one to break the silence. “If you think for one minute this kid is coming into my house, Ted Thackett, you got another thing coming. Tell me you know better than to think a thing that.”

“Would you just chill a minute? We’ll get her someplace to stay.”

“Yeah? With whose money? I don’t see you bringing anything in.”

Carly watches them and listens to them and thinks, Why would Teddy be with somebody like that? Then it hits her: Carly’s mother was somebody like that. Carly’s mother treated Teddy just about like this. Not quite as harsh. But somewhere in the same neighborhood.

“I have money,” Carly says. “I can get a room for tonight. I have eighty dollars.”

“Eighty dollars?” Linda says. Like she’s sneezing on something that belongs to Carly. Like she’s saying twenty cents. “You’re on the ocean, kiddo. You can’t get much for eighty dollars.”

“Now wait,” Teddy says. “Wait. Let’s just go to the cheapest place we can find and see what they charge.”

“And who makes up the difference?”

“Stop!” Carly shouts.

Everybody does. Everything stops. It makes her feel braver. So she goes on.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here. Stop arguing over me. Fuck it. Fuck this. I’ll be fine on my own. Just stay out of it. But I need to talk to Teddy. I’m not leaving town without talking to Teddy.”

Carly waits for something to happen. Nothing happens. She really stopped the woman cold. She never dropped an F-bomb before. It felt pretty good.

“Teddy,” Carly says. “When can I talk to you?”

“Come on, get in the car,” he says. “We’ll find you a place to stay.”

“My car?” Linda asks.

Teddy sighs deeply. “Fine. Not your car. Fine. Carly, can you just sit tight and wait right here? I’m going to walk home and get my car. And then we’ll find you a place to stay.”

“Take my car,” Linda says. “Who cares? I was just saying. I was just pointing out that you might want to ask my permission first.”

Teddy sighs again. “Linda, mind if I use your car?”

She fishes around in her purse and then tosses him the keys. It’s a wild, drunken throw. They land in the dirt a few feet away. Then she turns on one high-heeled red cowboy boot and teeters back into the lounge.

Carly looks at Teddy, and Teddy looks at her. She sees the beginnings of a smile form around his mouth and in the crinkly places at the corners of his eyes. But it’s an unbearably sad smile.

“This is really off the wall,” he says. “This is really out of nowhere.”

What she thinks is, It wouldn’t be. If you had told me where you landed. Like you promised you would.

What she says is, “Sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Teddy retrieves the keys.

“Jocelyn died?”

“I wouldn’t make a thing like that up.”

“I know. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just hard to take in.”

“Tell me about it. I think that asshole killed her.”

“You tell the police this?”

“No. What’s the point? He killed himself, too. Too late to put him in jail even if I’m right. Drove them both off a cliff. Only question is whether he did it on purpose. I guess we’ll never know. But she was leaving him. So I think he did it on purpose. I can’t prove it. But that’s what I think.”

“Jesus,” Teddy says.

He puts an arm around her shoulder and leads her over to Linda’s car. It’s an old vintage Jaguar XKE, perfectly restored. She has money. Linda has money.

He opens the door for her, and she plunks into the deep, low bucket seat.

“Ow,” she says, as her thigh muscles have to try to support her weight.

Teddy walks around and gets in. But he doesn’t start the engine. He just sits there, both hands on the steering wheel.

“Jocelyn always did have a broken picker. Everybody said so.”

“She picked
you
.”

“I rest my case.” A long pause. Then he looks over at Carly. Studies her. “What happened to your face?”

“Which part of it?”

“I don’t know. Start anywhere.”

“Well. The scrape on my chin was from when I took a header into some gravel jumping off a freight train. The sunburn blister scars are from walking halfway across Arizona without a hat after we ran out of sunscreen. And the scratches are from some berry vines where I slept last.”

Teddy sits another minute, then starts the engine. It has a beefy sound, a sort of growly rumble.

He does not appear to want to address anything she just said.

“I apologize for Linda. She has this thing about the house. She’s very…private. Doesn’t like anybody in the house. Or even near the house. And she’s a little gun-shy on the subject of my exes. But she’s not as bad as she came off back there.”

“Didn’t figure she could be,” Carly says.

She’s gone beyond the need to be polite. It’s a relief.

He pulls out of the parking lot and heads out Patrick’s Point Road, away from town.

“There’s a place down here that has good rates. If it’s more than what you’ve got, I’ll cover the difference. Not that it’s really my money, but I’ll take the heat for that. She’s going out of town tomorrow morning. So I’ll come by where you’re staying, and we’ll talk. OK?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

She’s just too tired now. As if she’s been hanging on to one skinny vine to keep from plummeting off a cliff. But she’s been hanging on too long. It’s worth the fall just to let go. It feels good to let go. She really couldn’t have held on even a minute longer. Everybody has a breaking point. Especially if you’re going to fall sooner or later anyway.

“If it was my house, it’d be a whole different story. I’m really sorry, Carly. If it were just me, what’s mine would be yours. Hell, what’s mine
is
yours. Only trouble is, that’s pretty much nothing. But we’ll talk tomorrow, I promise. I’ll come by first thing. I don’t know what I can do to help, but if I can, I will. OK?”

“Why can’t we talk tonight?”

“Please, Carly. Wait till she goes out of town. If I don’t get right back there, I won’t get a moment’s peace tonight. I’ll come by in the morning.”

He pulls into the gravel parking lot of the Redwood Inn. The sign says, B
EST RATES IN TOWN
. It also says, V
ACANCY
.

Teddy walks with her into the office.

An old man with just a fringe of hair looks up from a loud TV show.

“Hey, Ted,” he says.

“What’s the cheapest room you can give my young friend here?”

“Well, seeing as it’s you…that’ll only be forty dollars extra. No, I’m kidding. Eighty-five, and that’s a little better than ten percent discount.”

“She’ll take it.”

Carly tries to go into her pocket for the cash, but Teddy grabs her wrist and holds it still.

“You hang on to that,” he says. “In case you need it later on.”

He pulls a credit card out of his wallet and pays for the room.

Carly’s heart goes in two distinct directions at once. Teddy is taking over, taking care of things. Like she knew he would. That’s one direction. But then there’s the other direction. The one where he’s telling her all her problems won’t be solved after tonight. Which she was pretty clear on already.

He pulls her into his arms, and she buries her face in him. Wraps her arms around him and holds on tight, her eyes pressed closed. Breathes in that warmth. It’s been away for so long. Or she has. Or both.